


When I grow old I’ll find your heart (I promise mine, just give me part)

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Fluff, Future Fic, Gen, Happy Ending, Steve McGarrett Has Issues, also an ambiguous time setting but they live together so probably mid-s10 or later, also kind of?, for sure, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27384607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: Steve looks from Danny’s hands up at his face, and says, “I never thought I’d get to be this old.”Just like that. Like it really is just the simple sentence that it sounds like, instead of something that makes Danny’s stomach drop to the floor.Or: Steve’s been thinking. Danny goes through yet another minor crisis about this person he chose to give a lot of shits about. Everything is okay.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett & Danny "Danno" Williams, Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 20
Kudos: 241





	When I grow old I’ll find your heart (I promise mine, just give me part)

**Author's Note:**

> Feelings! Because canon never gave us enough time for those.
> 
> The title is from _When I grow old_ by Callum James.

Steve’s been uncharacteristically quiet and contemplative for two full days when Danny’s patience runs out. It’s not that Steve’s brain is usually empty, but he’s a man who operates on impulse, and he isn’t prone to getting stuck in his own head the way Danny does. Overthinking, that’s Danny’s thing, and Steve can’t co-opt that, because then Danny’s going to worry about Steve worrying and they’ll end up in a spiral of doom, which Danny is pretty sure his therapist wouldn’t approve of. She’s a nice lady. She doesn’t deserve that.

So it’s all very rude on Steve’s part, if you think about it. Which is why when Danny finds him in the kitchen, holding a water bottle and staring vacantly out the window for the so manieth time, he feels a hot flare of anger. Or fear. Whatever, those two have always been intricately linked when it comes to Steve, anyway. “What’s up with you?” 

Steve jumps, which is strange enough in itself that Danny doesn’t enjoy it, at all, even though under normal circumstances he’d think that sneaking up on the great Steve McGarrett would be kind of funny. “Oh,” Steve says, when he realizes it’s just Danny, the person he lives with, who shares this kitchen with him on a daily basis. He frowns a little. “Nothing much. Been thinking.”

“Must be hard if you’re new to it,” Danny quips, because he has to, but his heart isn’t in it. He pulls the water bottle from Steve’s slack hands. Steve watches, but doesn’t do anything to stop him. The bottle is nearly room temperature but still unopened, so Steve must’ve been standing here a while. “Thinking about what?”

Steve looks from Danny’s hands up at his face, and says, “I never thought I’d get to be this old.”

Just like that. Like it really is just the simple sentence that it sounds like, instead of something that makes Danny’s stomach drop to the floor. 

He thinks he can hear a _splat_ when it hits his bare feet. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, and yeah, that anger, it’s back full force. He twists the cap of the bottle open, because he needs to strangle something and this is a better idea than grabbing Steve’s neck.

Steve shrugs, but he does finally seem fully present in the here and now. “Just, you know,” he says, like that makes any sense whatso-fucking-ever. He makes a grab for the bottle, and he needs to exert a lot more force than Danny did, but he manages to wrangle it free and take it back.

Danny watches him down half of its contents. “I _don’t_ know.”

For a moment, Steve looks like he’s about to start shrugging again, as if he really expects Danny to read his mind to get his meaning. Then he starts talking, so matter-of-fact it’s like he thinks what he’s saying should have been obvious from the start. “I’ve lived a pretty dangerous life, Danny. Odds were I wasn’t gonna make it to retirement, and that never really scared me.”

It scares Danny pretty goddamn effectively, though. “I hate you,” he says, out loud, in spite of it being a lie, or maybe precisely because it is. “I hate the way your brain works so much.” That one’s not quite as untrue.

Steve doesn’t let any of it bother him and rolls right on. “It was way scarier to think of getting old and not being able to do my job anymore, but last weekend-”

Danny interrupts him again. “When Charlie was here?” Somehow, Steve thinking about how he’d be a-okay having been blown to pieces by now while helping an adoring Charlie turn a banana with a face in his coloring book blue and purple is even more infuriating than anything Steve’s said so far.

“Yes,” Steve says, who didn’t hear the stuff about the purple banana, because the lack of mindreading capabilities goes both ways, even after all these years. “Last weekend I found myself thinking that if I retire, I’ll have more free time to spend with Charlie. I was looking forward to getting old.” He twists the cap back on the bottle. “That kind of threw me, you know?”

It’s not Danny’s stomach that drops this time, but it might be his heart. He leans into the kitchen island. He’s starting to feel a little weak in the knees from this whiplash of emotions. “Oh.”

“The idea of not getting to have that- It’s terrifying, suddenly.” Steve pauses, puts the bottle on the counter behind him. He takes a moment, still looking a little surprised at locating this extremely fundamental human desire to live a long and happy life in his own mind of all places. “It’s not that I ever wanted to die, but it seemed like a risk worth taking. Now I’m not so sure.”

“You’ve been thinking-” Danny says, and he gets stuck there for a few seconds, because his mind has some difficulty grappling with this concept. “You’ve been thinking about how you’d like to stay alive to be there for the kids.”

“Not just the kids, but yeah.”

Danny feels-

He’s not sure what he feels. Rage at the world and every part of it that shaped Steve’s mind into a place where “hey, I might want to grow old with my family” is a revelation he needed to have. Relief he’s had that thought now. Sickening fear he might forget it again someday.

“Listen,” he says, “I know we don’t really say these things, but-”

Steve cuts him off, like they always do. “Yeah, I know.”

“I love you,” Danny says, anyway. Usually implying it and being let off the hook is enough, but sometimes it just isn’t. He needs to get this point across if he wants to get any sleep tonight. “But I’ll kill you if you die for some greater good.”

“That’s not physically possible.”

“Then don’t make me do it.”

Steve is fully relaxed now, present and damn near smiling. “Not planning on it,” he promises, which is more of a weight off Danny’s shoulders than he would like something so stupidly obvious to be. “There are too many small goods in my life these days.”

Danny is glad, then endeared, and then suspicious, all in the span of a single second. He pokes a finger in Steve’s direction. “Don’t tell me I’m one of them.”

Steve doesn’t even bother batting Danny’s finger out of the air. He just lets it hang there, being all smug himself. “Of course not. You’re at least ten.”

“God.” Just for effect, Danny throws his hands up in the air. Steve is fully grinning now, so Danny ducks past him to steal the contentious water bottle, just because, and then turns on his heel and leaves the kitchen, because clearly he can’t expect anything sensible to come out of Steve’s mouth at this point. “Why do I even put up with you?” he wonders, out loud.

“Because I love you, too,” Steve calls after him, with the absolute gall to sound cheerful about it. 

And yeah, okay, Danny can admit when he wasn’t entirely right. Nothing sensible with the possible exception of that one thing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Leave a comment if you feel like it, take care, and stay safe in these crazy times. ❤ 
> 
> I’m on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com), or with my exclusively H50 (and mostly McDanno) sideblog as [five-wow](https://five-wow.tumblr.com).


End file.
